Anil Agarwal makes far too many enemies. Far too often. In 2001, it was striking PSU workers who would not allow him to enter the premises of Balco, a PSU he had just acquired. That year, SEBI also barred his Sterlite Industries from the markets for manipulation of share prices. Later, he angered investors, who shot down two of his proposals: to delist Sterlite Industries and an elaborately complex exercise to restructure his Vedanta group.

More recently, villagers from Niyamgiri Hills in Orissa ambushed the London shareholders’ meeting of holding company Vedanta Resources. (The group proposes to mine bauxite there for its alumina refinery in Niyamgiri.) Environmental activists likened Vedanta to the greedy multinational in the blockbuster film Avatar.

Shareholders, regulator, government, workers, tribals, business leaders, politicians — the 56-year-old chairman of the Vedanta group has rumbled with them all. And, as a senior official from the Aditya Birla group admits, Agarwal is one tough adversary. He would know. The Birla clan has lost a few skirmishes with Vedanta, including a bidding war for Hindustan Zinc.

But with his $9.6 billion offer to acquire a controlling stake in Cairn India, Agarwal may have acquired a new rival who could make all his earlier skirmishes seem like school-boy brawls. With his entry into oil and gas exploration, Agarwal has set foot into Mukesh Ambani’s turf.